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Review It’s almost a year since we reviewed the Foxsat-HDR from Humax, which was one of the first Freesat+ recorders to appear in the UK. Since then, there’s been more of a steady trickle, rather than a flood of Freesat gear coming on stream. To drum up a bit more interest in the satellite service, Freesat itself had a bit of a publicity push for its adoption of the BBC iPlayer and HD broadcasts for recent sporting events such as the Winter Olympics. Getting in on the act is Grundig’s with its Freesat+ HD DVR, the inelegantly named GUFSDTR500HD.

Grundig's GUFSDTR500HD: the Freesat competition hots up at last

Equipped with a 500GB hard disk – that can store about 300 hours of SD programmes or 125 hours of HD – a 320GB model is also available for about £20 cheaper, so not much of a saving really. Incidentally, this Grundig recorder is virtually identical to the Goodmans 500GB Freesat+ HD DTR launched at the same time for the same price. Grundig and Goodmans are both owned by the same parent company, so they’ve effectively launched own-brand versions of the same product.

The Grundig GUFSDTR500HD is compact and solidly built, about the size of a small pizza box. It’s equipped with twin tuners, allowing you to record two programmes simultaneously. We were initially surprised to see a third satellite connector sticking out the back, although closer inspection revealed a little label next to this saying that it doesn’t actually do anything. Curious.

There’s an HDMI connector plus cable, two Scarts for older TVs and both optical and coaxial digital audio outputs for hooking the unit up to a surroundsound speaker system. The Ethernet port is labelled ‘for future use’. What wonders await remains to be seen.

Alas, the 5483 iPlayer beta access code didn’t work on this Grundig box – it’s still Humax boxes only at the moment. One minor oversight is the lack of a USB port that would allow you to play music, photos or video files stored on a hard disk or memory stick. The Humax Foxsat has two USB ports for this purpose.

Ports aplenty, some with mystery uses

The front panel is very plain – there’s no LCD display, just a couple of lights that glow to indicate the power and recording activity. Unusually, though, the front panel does have a little navigation control pad alongside the standard playback buttons – handy if you’ve misplaced the remote control and need to quickly change channels to set up a recording.